


molon labe

by deuteroscopies



Series: the prophet and the king [35]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Bargaining, Blood and Violence, Demonic Possession, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Rough Sex, Sexual Coercion, Sexual Violence, Supernatural Elements, Vampire Bites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24747307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deuteroscopies/pseuds/deuteroscopies
Summary: Freddie and Ephram have their showdown with Martin Adjaye, for once and for all. But it comes with a price, one all too familiar: Freddie's body.(Martin Adjaye - Idris Elba FC)
Relationships: Freddie Watts/Ephram Pettaline
Series: the prophet and the king [35]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551673





	molon labe

**Author's Note:**

> >   
> Freddie Watts = Tom Hardy FC, Ephram Pettaline = Boyd Holbrook FC. These stories are set in the supernatural town of Soapberry Springs, in the Pacific Northwest. Freddie is a fairy con man from London, with cobalt-coloured dragonfly wings and silver fairy dust, who has a Japanese Chin familiar named Oliver; Ephram is a witch from impoverished East Kentucky who shares his body with a demon called Anaxis and has green magic of his own.
>> 
>> [the prophet and the king 'verse tumblr](http://theprophetandtheking.tumblr.com/)  
> 

It was, of all places, a moderately-sized office building in Harrow on the Hill. Nothing untoward about it, no particularly moneyed facade, nothing to indicate that it sheltered the three witches and one vampire who were Freddie’s and Ephram’s quarry. Who they’d bird-dogged halfway around the globe.

True to his decision, Ephram had roused Freddie from bed at half-past four in the morning to commence his spellwork, bundling his sleepy husband propped up against the headboard as Ephram sat cross-legged against him and, for the first time, truly accessed his magic without Anaxis instantly consuming the greater part of it. 

The force of that rush of mingled witch-fairy magic had made them both gasp out silent screams as if they’d hit freezing water – a frantic volley of barks from Oliver back in Soapberry made sure Iann was aware that something big was happening – before Ephram gathered it all up, pressed into something more serviceable through the sheer intent of his will. Acid spring green filigreed with shimmery silver, a thick plaited rope of it that he fed between them unendingly while it tugged through Freddie’s sugarplum and the ghost of the Bvlgari Blue and then back through Ephram’s own hound-dog hunter’s senses.

Stellafa didn’t, when it came down to the raw power between them, stand a crazy snowball’s chance of keeping herself or her master hidden.

“Any thoughts on how we should go in?” Ephram asked his husband, squinting up at the office building in the starched white early sun. “You want we should do stealthy? Or bust in guns a-blazing?” He looked at Freddie, turning his hand at his side so their knuckles brushed together. “Whichever way, I ain’t worried about what’s inside, dumplin. You and me, we can take em. We can take it.”

The strength of their combined magic - now that Ephram could access the full unbridled potential of his own wellspring, as it was no longer required to keep the demon at bay - had been shocking when it had first swelled between them, instantly bringing Freddie to a level of wakefulness he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt before. And even when Ephram had taken control of it, marshaling it and wielding it as a tool, the power thrumming between them and through them, that tether unbreakable; Freddie couldn’t help but be a bit in awe of it, knowing that what they had was absolutely unlike anything else.

And now that they were here, standing outside this nondescript building - an unremarkable collection of offices in the High Street of Harrow-on-the-Hill (a place Freddie hadn’t been since his days at Harrow School, many years before) - he was glad of that awe. It was comforting. Because what Ephram said was right - whatever lurked inside, witch or vampire, the two of them would be alright. His husband had made sure of it.

They would still need to be sensible, of course - _powerfu_ l wasn’t the same as _invincible_ \- but they would, as Ephram said, _take it_. Whatever, or whoever it was. 

And hopefully, Freddie would finally be able to close the book on Martin Adjaye once and for all, relegating him entirely to the past.

“I think…” the fairy said, mimicking his darling and peering up at the unimpressive facade of the building, considering their options before turning to meet his husband’s eyes, “-maybe a bit of both?”

“I mean - and this may sound absurd, so dismiss it if you think it’s rubbish; only hear me out first - maybe we should just… walk in through the front door. Martin’s the one who contacted me, after all, looking for ‘help’, so for all they know, we’re here to provide it. Which, given Martin’s and my history, may wrong-foot them a bit. Or force them to show their hand a bit more quickly than they might care to.”

“We could go in together - or I could go on my own, and you could follow with a bit of stealth…” Freddie took Ephram’s hand and squeezed it, the thought of Martin making his stomach roil, in spite of his confidence that if there were casualties to be had that morning, it wouldn’t be he and Ephram who would feel them. “ _Or_ , we could go about things entirely differently. In this case I’m not sure there _is_ a ‘best’ option.” 

“So what do you think, sweetheart?” the fairy asked, casting his eyes in the direction of their destination again, “I trust your judgment.”

Ephram folded his hand into Freddie’s when his husband reached for it, listening as Freddie outlined his suggestion for their approach and his rationale behind it. He didn’t interject, awash in the novel feeling of content and calm that he was intensely conscious of, even in this moment before facing down the coterie of Freddie’s demons. He watched his husband talk as Freddie first took stock of the building and then turned to Ephram, and felt nothing so strongly inside him as his love for this man.

When Freddie finished, putting the decision back into Ephram’s court, the tall witch nodded and lifted Freddie’s hand to his lips, pressing a quick impassioned kiss there before walking them both up to the front door. “Here goes, man o’ mine,” Ephram said. His expression was composed, alert and confident, but there was an almost fevered brightness to his eyes; an eagerness to fight, one scrubbed of fear or trepidation. 

He reached out and buzzed the doorbell.

It took maybe the space of two breaths before the door swung open, and there was Stellafa herself. She remained halfway behind the door, eyes bloodshot and darting between the two of them like she was trying to ascertain if they were real or apparitions. “We understand,” Ephram said firmly as he used one shoulder to shove the door the rest of the way open – Stellafa falling back with a faint snarl – “that Martin Adjaye thinks he has business with my husband.”

Stellafa had backed up enough to hit the desk that was in the front room, looking obstinate, and she opened her mouth to begin chattering lowly, “–oh, you’re gonna get it, you both, gonna get what you came here for, gonna get–”

Her muttering was cut short by a cultured, deep voice from the cavernous office space behind a halfway-opened stained glass Dutch door. “Freddie. Come in here, please. Bring your partner, by all means.” Stellafa made a movement towards the door, but Martin’s voice halted her immediately: “–not you, Stellafa. I want to see my little one without your presence nearby.”

The diminutive pet name for Freddie rankled, but Ephram only pressed his lips together in a furious sort of not-really-smile, shaking his head once at Adjaye’s audacity. “I’m here,” he murmured lowly to Freddie. “We got each other. You’re safe.”

Stellafa’s madness seemed to have somehow metastasised since Freddie had seen her last; as though it had entered her bloodstream and spread throughout her body, leaving no part of her free of its influence and effect. She looked like Bedlam, made manifest. Like whatever had been left of the witch she’d once been, the poised and elegant woman who’d been so at ease in the service and friendship of Suky Toddry, had finally burned off like a fog in the unforgiving morning sun of Martin’s influence. 

It was… jarring, to say the least.

But disturbing as it was - as she was - Freddie found that he still wasn’t afraid. Not when Ephram shouldered his way inside; not when Stellafa started babbling and muttering that they would get what they’d come for. Not even when he realised that the other two witches Polina had spoken of were still unaccounted for. Instead, if anything, he felt… ready. 

Ready to put an end to all this. Ready to stand beside his husband and do what needed to be done.

And then Martin spoke from the other room - his voice the same as it had always been, deep and rich and impossible to ignore - and Freddie felt his hands begin to shake, ice forming in the pit of his stomach.

Iann had been so certain that Martin had been reduced to a husk by that wand; he’d been nearly positive that Martin would have been left frail and weak, a shell of his former self. But that voice…

That voice sounded the furthest thing from weak.

And old habits - or, more pointedly, the indelible gaslighting Freddie had absorbed when he was young - died hard. So when Martin instructed them to come into his office (or whatever he was using the space for, after he and his entourage had left the Langham), his pet name for Freddie hanging heavy in the room, harking the fairy back to another time and place, another version of himself, he very nearly obeyed. Not because he wanted to, but because Martin Adjaye was a man whose orders were meant to be followed.

Martin was a force. He was inevitable and undeniable - and no was a word that Freddie had never mustered either the courage or the strength to say to him.

The impulse to do as he’d been told bloomed and died all in the blink of an eye though; because Ephram was there, with him and beside him, promising him that he was safe, and that they would be alright - and Freddie met his darling’s eyes, clear blue and bright and unafraid, alight with the glow of conviction and love and an eagerness for reckoning, and Freddie nodded subtly. Ignoring the open door and the lunatic vampire staring daggers at them, the fairy looked only at his husband. 

“I know, love,” he said, almost entirely sotto voce, grateful and adoring, his love for the brave man in front of him burning fierce and hot - and then he took Ephram’s hand again, squaring his shoulders and heading for the door. Surreptitiously looking taking in their surroundings, looking for anything untoward, anything _off_ ; and raising his voice enough to be heard as he called, “My _husband_ , actually. It seems you’re a bit out of the loop since your convalescence, Martin…” filling his free hand with enough fairy dust to choke a horse as they stepped cautiously into the office.

Not that it would necessarily do much good - but still, it wouldn’t hurt.

Whatever Martin thought he was playing at, Freddie had no intention of being overconfident, or under-prepared. Just in case.

The office that they entered seemed to be entirely filled with shadows – all except for a broad mahogany desk sat squarely in the centre of the room, with two green-shaded bankers’ lamps at each end. They illuminated the desk quite well, including the formidable frame of the man sitting behind it. Handsome, self-possessed, with a force of presence that seemed to radiate out to engulf the two interlopers, Martin Adjaye was indeed no weak and withered husk. And he only had eyes for Freddie.

His gaze was arresting and unwavering as the vampire stood, buttoning his suit jacket and coming around the side of the desk. He held up his hands slightly in a gesture of peace; as he approached it became clear that he and Ephram were of a height, but even without vampire strength Martin might have physically had the edge. “Freddie,” Martin said, his already low voice sliding into an even more subterranean register, intimate and laden with history. “You look beautiful, my boy. I always predicted you’d make as pretty a man as you did a youth, didn’t I?”

Ephram growled in his throat, and Martin glanced over at him impassively, with as assessing a look as if he were buying horseflesh for his stable. “If I’d wanted to harm either of you,” Martin said, a droll and faintly chiding tone to his voice, “don’t you think I’d have done it already? Since after all you both stepped into _my_ establishment, freely and of your own will.”

“Can the mysterious Dracula shit,” Ephram snapped, his already strained temper fraying. “What d’you want with my husband?”

Martin Adjaye stood in front of them for a beat of silence, the shadows in the room becoming more oppressive. Finally he said, dark eyes trained on Freddie again, “…I need your help. You know, of course, that the Bvlgari Blue that I … wrongly … implanted in you to incubate created an effect that I hadn’t accounted for when it was installed in the wand, but you don’t know the details, do you. Peter wouldn’t have known to tell you either, despite how smart he thinks he is.” Martin took a step closer to Freddie, as though he couldn’t help himself from wanting the fairy near, his powerful hands lowered but seeming as though they might reach for Freddie at any moment. 

“You were the necessary element, Freddie. The diamond was in you so long that you _infused_ it, you stellar little creature. So bold and so bright, all that hope in fairy-dust silver that you carried with you, produced in that marvelous body – I should have realized that having you incubate it to fruition was reliant on more than simply your ability to survive the process.” Martin’s voice had taken on a sonorous volume, every articulately delivered word heavy with importance: “It’s _you_ , sweet boy. The wand was nothing without you.”

The main door to the building banged as Stellafa flounced angrily out, and despite himself, Ephram startled. Now that he was seeing Martin Adjaye for the first time, taking in the vampire’s charisma and the way he commanded attention, he could see how Freddie as a lost, lonely boy could be so completely taken in. The man was mesmerizing, and Ephram wasn’t even the one trying to bear up under the full import of that laser focus. At all of seventeen? His poor Freddie hadn’t stood a chance.

When Martin told him he looked beautiful, it took an absurd amount of resolve for Freddie not to look the vampire in the eye, as the asinine ghost of his teenage self all but shrieked at him to accept the compliment, to believe it was genuine - but thankfully, almost as soon as it did, Iann’s voice was louder, the Jiminy Cricket version of his friend, that he’d apparently conjured up to remind him not to be a ninny, bellowing, ‘ _Confetti, what the hell are you doing?! Did you forget that **thralls** are a thing?! ¡Ay, Dios mío! What is this - amateur hour? Elbow Pettaline and tell him to keep **his** eyes on his own paper too…”_

But when Freddie heeded Imaginary Iann’s advice, and glanced not at Martin, but at his husband, Ephram, in spite of his obvious anger, had kept his eyes fixed so as to protect himself, and Freddie felt a swell of pride. _He_ was the only weak link here; Ephram had himself perfectly focused on the matter at hand. So the fairy took a slow breath as his witch and Martin fired little shots at one another across the bows - unfortunately aware that Martin would clock it; that the vampire was likely already listening to the too-fast beat of his heart - and waited for the imposing man in front of them to answer his husband’s question.

And when he did, using sweet flattering words to tell them almost nothing, as he stepped closer to Freddie, the scent of that familiar cologne enveloping the fairy just like it used to - battering him with memories of all sorts, all of them luridly vivid - Freddie tightened his grip on Ephram’s hand, _and_ on the handful of dust in his fist, barely hearing the slam of the door when it came. 

He simply couldn’t spare the focus - not if he wanted to be an asset to his darling instead of a liability. 

“Don’t do that,” he said quietly, lifting his head and meeting Martin’s eyes, in spite of Imaginary Iann’s caution; keeping his dust at the ready, just in case, but needing to assert himself somehow, in some small way. “Don’t lie to me anymore, Martin. I haven’t been your boy in a very long time, and that ‘wrongly’ nonsense is just offensive to all of us. You did precisely what you meant to do - what you’d _wanted_ to do from the moment you met me - and you would have been quite happy to kill me to do it. You said as much that night at Suky’s, remember? I didn’t lose quite so much blood as to forget all that.”

The fairy took another steadying breath. “Or to forget what you did to me in order to ‘implant’ it in the first place.”

“I imagine you’re at least telling the truth about my being somehow integral to your not being a withered old invalid in need of a nurse though, so I suppose that’s something.” Freddie paused then, summoning the wherewithal to do what had always seemed so impossible when he’d thought Martin Adjaye was just this side of godlike. “But I have no intention of helping you do anything, Martin. Not now, and not ever. Why in the world did you think I would?”

Freddie’s grip on his husband’s hand would have been enough to bring a weaker man to his knees, as he went on in that same quiet voice. “Just let me alone, Martin. Please.”

“But that’s exactly what you can do in order to cut me out of your life for good, Freddie.” Martin didn’t step back, exactly, but the vampire’s entire body and posture shifted, as though every iota of energy drained right out of him in front of their eyes. “You can help me. I know you’ve got no reason to, none in the world, not after what I’ve done to you–” Martin gave a wry, bitter laugh, admitting, “–and yeah, you’re right, of course, I did to you exactly what I felt needed to happen for my own ends, no matter how much it hurt you.” 

His gaze was still locked on Freddie. The stillness of it was unsettling to Ephram, for a reason he couldn’t put his finger on until he heard Freddie’s taking a long, measured breath next to him; unlike the vampires Ephram knew, Martin Adjaye made no pretense of breathing. His broad chest remained motionless, giving the impression that he could stand there unmoving and keep Freddie pinned with his basilisk stare forever.

Martin was continuing though, his voice losing none of its gliding richness. “You said to me, Freddie, that part of you would always belong to me. And that’s true, isn’t it? You were always such a sweet one, even with all your mischief. The way you’d play at making me jealous. Your lavish hand with spending my money. Our time together still holds a place in your heart as one of the happiest times in your life, doesn’t it.” There was no question in Martin’s statement, only the wooing smoothness that imbued his reminiscing and the fond, indulgent smile that ghosted across his handsome face.

“Bullshit,” Ephram interjected, his American twang breaking loudly into the conversation. “Bull. Fuckin’ Shit.” He jabbed an accusing finger at Martin Adjaye, although he didn’t step between the vampire and Freddie – he was a partner in this showdown, Freddie didn’t need him to sweep in and take control – barking, “You ripped Freddie apart, _literally_ , and even if it didn’t get to that extreme, you fuckin’ **knew** the whole time how susceptible he was to what you came a-offering. Made you feel like a big fuckin’ man, huh?” Ephram’s lip curled into a snarl, and he spat contemptuously at Martin’s well-heeled feet, shaking with rage. “Go fuck yourself, Adjaye. You ain’t owed nothin’.”

The stillness that followed Ephram’s outburst, like the shadows, seemed to flood the room in the moments afterwards. And then, finally, Martin said, “That’s true.” No apology, no denial. He turned and went back to the desk, sitting one hip against it so he could reach over and pull open the drawer. “And yet, here you are, the both of you. Come to see what it is I wanted by walking yourselves right through the front door, instead of either ignoring my reaching out to you or bashing your way in to lay me low. Which – and correct me if I’m wrong, little one – tells me that you’re not entirely set on the idea of washing your hands of me.” Martin paused, still turned away from them. “At least not yet.”

When he turned back to them, Martin was holding three identical boxes: the Trappers holding Freddie’s memories, that he’d handed over in order to keep Iann from being killed. “The wand was destroyed,” Martin told them. “Without you present for its activation, it became too unstable to contain that amount of magic. These, on the other hand…” Martin twirled them in his palm, fingers moving swiftly against each other until the boxes were a blur, “…these pieces of you, imbued with your most elemental emotion, they were what I managed to eke out enough of your singular magic from to feed into some small extension of my sanity.” 

The boxes stopped spinning and Martin crunched them in his fist, deforming them. “I need more of you. To keep from going mad at the 500-year mark. You promised I’d always have some of you, Freddie, and that’s all I’m asking. Then you’ll be well shot of me.” 

Freddie stayed silent as Martin spoke. Silent as he watched the shifts of emotion show themselves on the vampire’s still-handsome face; silent as Ephram interrupted, his husband’s ferocious anger on his behalf - the undisguised rage vibrating through him that could only have been born of an equally powerful love - so strong and so unwavering that it shored up the fairy’s own, desperately-needed, stores of strength.

Silent. 

Though the use of that endearment, that pet name he’d gloried in so shamelessly once-upon-a-time, still made him flinch.

Freddie waited until Martin had finished; until his former lover’s grotesque little show of the Trappers had concluded - all of Martin’s ending were violent in some way or another - and then, finally, he spoke.

“It seems to me,” the fairy said, his voice soft, but oddly flat, “-that all I’ll need to do to get shot of you, darling, is _nothing_. You’ll go mad, and Stellafa will leave you gibbering to yourself in a room somewhere, and I’ll be able to continue on living my life without ever having to give you another thought.”

Freddie’s back was straight, his shoulders square as he went on. “You shouldn’t flatter yourself, Martin - we’re here because I’ve finally learned that you can’t _be_ ignored, or gotten round, or escaped from, and you’ve consumed enough of my life as it is. I wasn’t just going to sit at home wondering, and waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Freddie rubbed his thumb across Ephram’s knuckles. “My husband deserves better than that. _More_ than that. And so do I.”

But for all his steadiness, his efforts at cool detachment, the fairy couldn’t hide the flicker of pain in his eyes when he continued. “You’re right though,” he said quietly, eyes slate grey in the shadowy room and fixed on Martin, “-and you know it. You were the best thing ever to have happened to me then. I felt safe with you; happy… like I was finally worth something. And that’s why the _pleasure_ you took in hurting and humiliating me made the physical pain pale in comparison.”

“So yeah, you always _will_ have a part of me, Martin - but you don’t get to decide what that part is.”

Freddie glanced at Ephram beside him, drawing strength and comfort from the unyielding set of his witch’s jaw and the anger still burning in his eyes. “I know what love and happiness feel like now,” the fairy said, squeezing his husband’s hand before turning back to face the vampire, “-and quite frankly, darling - your word? It isn’t worth a bloody thing.”

“So why should I bother?” he asked, fronting a calm that he didn’t feel; an unruffled peace that had been conjured out of whole cloth for this particular moment, “Why should I give you anything at all beyond what you’ve already torn out of me? Why shouldn’t I simply just run down the clock?”

Freddie lifted his chin slightly, summoning the best of what he’d taught himself to be, the result of his own hard-won alchemy, and said, “Since you’ve noticed that I’m not a child anymore, I can only assume you’ve more compelling things to offer than just promises, yeah?”

The used-up Trappers scattered across the surface of the desk like dice as Martin loosed them from his grip, pleating his fingers into the inseam of his trouser leg as he remained half-seated on the piece of furniture. “You were worth much more than I realized, Freddie,” the vampire said, a bolt of bitter regret cracking his voice, finally. “And I only compounded my short-sightedness when I caught you for the second time. You, my pretty boy – you’re my worst – my _only_ disaster. No other enterprise I’ve ever undertaken has gone so far off the rails as what I expected with you.”

Martin directed his gaze behind the two of them, which made Freddie and Ephram suddenly aware that not only had Stellafa soundlessly materialized in the room, but her two witch companions from her former coven were flanking her. “I’m going to speak with Freddie alone, now,” Martin said, his diction returning to that of a man who expected to be obeyed. 

The two witches stepped forward in tandem to take Ephram’s arms, a move that made Ephram twist out of their grips with a vicious cuff aimed at the closet one’s head. “Like _fuck_ you are, Adjaye!” he shouted. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere, not without Freddie, and sure as hell I ain’t leaving him here with you.”

Stellafa was against his back, though, and Ephram could feel her fangs blade-sharp along the meat of his shoulder as she kept firm hold of him with vampire strength. “I wanted to drain you where you stand, blood doll,” she said with a madcap giggle. “But the Master said no, neither of you were to be hurt. Unless you resist. Or try to attack him.” Her fangs sliced through the leather of Ephram’s jacket and easily through the fabric of his shirt, bright spots of pain where they just barely pierced flesh; Ephram could feel the other witches’ magic starting to fog the atmosphere. 

He could respond in kind, now, with Anaxis firmly in control and his own magic accessible. But that would mean Ephram’s as-yet untested focus and Freddie’s dust against two very skilled witches, one insane vampire, and one formidable older vampire – not to mention the emotionally vulnerable aspect of it where Freddie was concerned. It would be a clusterfuck. And despite his loathing to leave Freddie alone with this monster of his past, Ephram knew, logically, that they’d have a better, cleaner chance with divide and conquer.

“All right,” he said, raising his hands with a scowl, training an intense stare on Freddie and holding his fairy’s gaze. Conveying with as much ability as he had that he wasn’t abandoning Freddie to Martin, that he believed in Freddie’s own strength and wherewithal, that he was going to make sure Stellafa and her witches were eliminated as a threat. And then come right back to rejoin Freddie as swiftly as he could. “I’m right in the next room,” Ephram said. “Right there.” He couldn’t say anything more, not with vampire hearing in the room.

And then it was just Martin Adjaye alone with Freddie.

“You know that I could take what I want of you,” Martin said, standing and taking deliberate, measured steps towards Freddie. “You know I’ve done it before, and what I’m capable of. I mean to have what I want from you, Freddie, and if it takes crippling your husband beyond use to you or his badge, I’ll do it.” He stopped a scant couple of inches from Freddie, letting his fangs drop, letting Freddie see the heat in his dark eyes. “But there’s another way. A civilized way. All you need to do is consent.”

With vampire speed, Martin curled one hand around the back of Freddie’s neck; he bent his head, close enough to kiss. “Let me drink from you one last time. Let me have you, little one.” Adjaye’s fangs, gleaming and wicked, lengthened until they pierced the vampire’s own bottom lip and he turned his head slightly, the drop of thin, cold blood smearing the corner of Freddie’s mouth. “I _want_ you, Freddie. Let me have you, this once.”

The sudden return of Stellafa and her witches - wherever the bloody hell _they_ had come from - would have been enough to shake Freddie’s illusion of poise, his bravado and imaginary calm, all on it’s own. But when Martin commanded that he would now speak to Freddie alone, the trio moving to take hold of Ephram, the fairy’s facade cracked, his eyes - meeting his husband’s - showing the kind of bone-deep fear that logic and confidence could do nothing to assuage. It was a survivor’s anguish; an echo of trauma already lived through, sharpened and held against the throat.

And when Ephram exploded, shouting that he wasn’t going anywhere, not without Freddie, fighting and struggling, the immensity of Freddie’s love for him brought a tear to the fairy’s eye, shiny silver, like mercury, as it slid down his cheek.

His skin crawled at the way Stellafa touched Ephram; the giddiness of her, the sickly scent of madness radiating off her in waves, her fangs all too eager to rip and rend Ephram’s flesh from his bones - and while Freddie knew that his darling was capable now of marshaling the demon’s power to command as his own; shot through with his own magic ( _their_ own magic), it was still untested. And the fact that he hadn’t yet made a move to use it, spoke to his desire to wait for a better moment - for higher ground and a more stealthy approach. And just before Freddie could turn to Martin to ask him to intervene with his child and call her off, Ephram was already going quietly - if not happily. 

But as he did, telling Freddie that he wouldn’t be far away, it was Ephram’s _belief_ in him; left unsaid but so loud in his eyes - that Freddie was strong enough to get through his fear, to keep his wits about him; that they would be alright, and he would be back as soon as he could - that gave the fairy the confidence to breathe again. To attempt to quell his hammering heart.

And then they were gone. He and Martin were alone again - for the first time in 24 years.

Martin drew steadily closer as he spoke - like a big cat, powerful and graceful, cunning and _hungry_ , like he’d always been; the threat of violence dripping from his words like honey, lust chasing it down as it fell - and Freddie took a deep breath; the only one in the room who needed to.

“You underestimate my husband at your peril, love,” the fairy said softly; knowing that Martin would never believe such a thing, that he’d disregard it as the sort of romantic tosh that he’d always thought Freddie had been prone to, “…but I do know what you can do, yeah.” Freddie’s voice shook without his permission, though the set of his shoulders never faltered. “There isn’t anything I could do to stop you.”

The fairy opened his hand, letting his dust drift to the floor unused, as Martin moved closer, fangs dropping, dark eyes hot - but still, though Freddie had anticipated his touch, when it came he couldn’t help but suck in an anxious breath; the sugarplum stone beginning, at the same time, to feel as though it had caught fire in his belly. 

“Drink, or _drain_ , Martin?” Freddie asked, not fighting, not struggling, because it was useless - a single grain of sand couldn’t dam an ocean, after all. “My blood, or my body? My soul or my sanity? How much of me do you intend to take this time?”

Martin pressed his hand hard against Freddie’s belly, right over where the sugarplum seed was heating up like an ember fanned to life. “Drink,” he said, the richness of his voice imbuing that one simple word with staggering sensuality, paired with the possessive hands at the back of Freddie’s neck and against his abdomen. “I’m not going to claim any sort of selflessness in that answer, Freddie, since we both know that would be a lie. But unfortunately, draining you would do me no good. It’s what’s in here–” he dug the heel of his hand in harder, as though the sugarplum’s heat could radiate up through Freddie’s skin, “that needs to be alive and vibrant for this particular magic to work.

“Yes, it’s a magic. One that Stellafa was able to design, and her fellow witches were able to create a proper working spell for. Since she’s useless to me in that regard anymore.” Martin followed the smear of blood on Freddie’s lip with a quick, chilly press of his tongue. “She seems to fancy your bloke, though. Mentioned that she wouldn’t mind turning him, so she could have a similarly mad vampire companion for herself.”

Tutting at Stellafa’s unbalanced state – the fact that he’d been the one to put her in it notwithstanding – Martin took a respectful half-step back to allow Freddie some breathing room. The hand on Freddie’s belly slid incrementally lower, skirting indecency. “Of course, if you give me your body as well …one time, this time, to set the spell more firmly … then I’ll have what I want. What I need. And I believe you need it too, little one.”

Martin smiled, the expression exactly as fondly indulgent, as graciously powerful, as knowingly sexual as it had ever been. “For closure, if nothing else.” He moved forward again, this time pulling Freddie’s body flush against his own, unyielding hardness. 

“You can have a moment to talk to your husband about it. Although you already know that if he realizes this is the best – the only – way to have me never darken your door again, my diamond of a boy, he’ll go along with whatever you ask.” Martin’s wrist, when he moved his hand from Freddie’s lower belly, brushed against the front of the fairy’s trousers as some sort of promise, some incentive.

“Go. Stellafa will make sure the two of you have privacy to speak. And remember all that I’ve told you, when you’re coming to your decision, Freddie.” With that, Martin turned Freddie to face the door to the office where Ephram and the three others were, giving him a small, encouraging push. Like you would a child in your care, or a pet rabbit you wanted to shoo.

That wand that he’d lusted after so thoroughly may not have worked, but for Freddie, Martin was already possessed of the ability to stop time. To turn it back in an instant. He’d done it just now, after all - and Freddie could see him savouring it in the depths of those beautiful pitiless eyes.

Freddie at 17 had never known a safer better place than Martin Adjaye’s arms; his bed, his favour. And for a moment, being held this way, having Martin close and wanting, possessive and imposing, felt anything but frightening - the fairy’s body reacting to the vampire the way that it had been honed and conditioned to do through nearly every moment of their time together - and without meaning to, he pressed incrementally closer.

But only for a moment; muscle memory having its day - and then gone again, the possessive hands on him strange and wrong; no longer the ones that fit there. No longer the touch that he craved. And it took every ounce of control that Freddie had, every thread of skill woven through him as a liar, not to react when Martin specifically spoke of the sugarplum stone in his belly. Because how did he bloody well know _that_?

Unless, of course, Suky Toddry had sold them out once again. 

Because why wouldn’t she?

Something, the fairy thought viciously; his Seelie court heritage sending a primal desire for vengeful redress thrumming straight through the core of him, out from the stone itself; was going to need to be done about that woman after all of this was done and dusted. 

Something… _elegant._

But that was a thought for another time.

That Martin knew about the sugarplum stone’s presence, and apparently, its power, was a point of concern, and would need to be shared with Ephram, sharpish - but for the time being, it had to be forgotten; the here and now, the _Martin_ of it all, being the much more demanding concern. Especially when the vampire, after lapping up the bit of blood left behind on Freddie’s lip, began to muse on Stellafa’s interest in Ephram; that cool sweep of tongue still able to set Freddie’s nerve endings alight - though they shorted out just as quickly in the wake of such a horrifying statement. 

The fairy couldn’t even begin to address it; he couldn’t bear to think about it, and his mouth fell open, a desperate and instinctive “No” falling from his lips before his sharp mind could catch up with his very soft heart. 

Not that Martin didn’t already know where his weakness laid, of course. He’d known that long before Freddie and Ephram had turned up on his doorstep - but still. Freddie had just confirmed it, and that was a tangible victory in and of itself.

If a very small one.

Magnanimously basking in the glow of a successful opening gambit, Martin allowed Freddie a bit of space - at the same time that he campaigned to remove any and all space from between them. But his hand crept low, the sensation making the fairy’s cock twitch and his skin crawl simultaneously; Martin’s terms cruel and arrogant, and the look in his eyes everything that Freddie had ever wanted from him; ever rejoiced the most in.

And then the vampire sent him off, instructing him to take his offer back to Daddy like a good little boy.

“Sweetheart,” Freddie said, trying to keep his voice measured, but wanting to throw himself directly into his husband’s arms the moment he had eyes on him again, forcing himself to walk unhurriedly, “-we need to talk.” 

He stopped in front of his darling and took Ephram’s hands, needing the comfort of his witch’s touch to ground and reassure him that they were still the ones in control, before turning to glare at Stellafa, refusing to even dignify the other two with a turn of his head. 

“Alone, yeah?” he said coldly, “So fuck off. Right bloody now.”

Stellafa looked beyond Freddie, and must have gotten some sort of go-ahead from Adjaye in the other room because she swept a jagged curtsey that was half grotesque and half pitiable.

“Come on, let’s give the lovebirds some room to discuss,” Stellafa sneered, ushering the two witches out of the side door ahead of her. She herself paused in the doorway to look them over, a sly smile showing her teeth and the glint in her eyes. “What a dilemma,” Stellafa said. “What a choice to make.”

Ephram growled deep in his chest, gripping Freddie’s hands hard, and Stellafa took that moment to make her exit, shutting the door behind her.

The moment she was gone and they were alone again, Ephram dragged Freddie into his arms, wrapping his husband up tight. “She told me,” Ephram mumbled into Freddie’s hair, nosing against him. “What Adjaye wants from you. To drink your blood and take you to bed.”

Saying it aloud in his own voice, to Freddie, made the ugly proposal all the more real, and Ephram went still, breathing hard. “I’m …" he started, then cleared his throat and swallowed and tried again.

“Tell me what we can do,” Ephram said. “I can unleash what magic I got. I’ll do it. Probably raze the place…” _and kill them all,_ was left unsaid. Total annihilation had been a possibility from the moment that Ephram had set the Cinquefoil against the demon brand. From the strained, reluctant look in Freddie’s eyes, though, it was clear that his fairy wasn’t keen on the idea of Ephram getting more blood on his hands. Ephram wasn’t eager for that, either, but they both knew he’d do it.

“If you’re … if you really are thinking about it,” Ephram said slowly, holding Freddie close, “Freddie, I’ll understand. God knows I’d be thinking about it if it was Otis Jenkins in there. But whatever you choose, we’re doin’ it together.” Ephram kissed Freddie’s cheekbone. “If you’re with Martin Adjaye, I need to be there too.” 

It sounded like the worst kind of weakness, Ephram was sure, to even be considering any course of action less than flooding the place with his unfettered magic and exploding each of them, Adjaye and the witches and Stellafa, from the inside out. Spectacular, vicious, and final. “Whatever you can live with best, Freddie, I’ll do it with you.”

As soon as Ephram’s arms closed around him, Freddie closed his eyes and sank against his husband’s chest, just clinging to him for a moment. Letting himself be weak and frightened and selfish for a count of ten, and then rising again - both internally, and with a lift of his head - when his poor darling struggled to get the words out. Knowing precisely what Ephram was about to offer, and knowing he was sincere in it to the bottom of his heart and the depth of his bones. 

Knowing too that he wouldn’t let him do it. Not unless they had absolutely no other choice.

Ephram had done enough of Freddie’s dirty work since they’d found one another; and Freddie had no intention of asking him to do it again. His husband struggled every day to believe that he was a good man; deserving of good things, and happiness, and a place in the Heaven he believed in, when his time to rest had come - and the fairy wouldn’t add to that struggle. He wouldn’t make Ephram a murderer. 

“No,” Freddie murmured, “I won’t ask you to do that, love. In an emergency, fine - we mean to walk out of here - but not like that. Thank-you though.” He pushed up a bit and kissed Ephram softly, “For loving me enough to do it - and for loving me enough to understand why I wouldn’t ever let you.”

“I don’t want to do it,” Freddie said honestly, offering Ephram a rueful sort of expression, “-but he does my head in. He’s…” The fairy sighed, lifting his shoulders once in a defeated sort of shrug and pressing a bit closer to his husband. “He’s _Martin_ ,” he muttered, knowing that Ephram would understand that; Otis Jenkins never having left the darkest corners of his darling’s mind.

“So I’ll survive,” he said, “-so long as you’re there with me. I’ll do it, and then we can go home. All of this will finally be bloody well _over_.”

Holding Ephram’s gaze, Freddie lifted a finger to his own lips, then turned in his darling’s arms, wrapping one tightly around him and clinging to it, whilst he used his other hand to write with fairy dust in the air in front of them; silver and silent in his own showy copperplate.

_ ‘They’re listening.   
_ _ Martin knows about the sugarplum seed - I’m guessing from Suky Toddry - but I don’t know what to make of that.   
_ _ I’m so sorry you’re going to have to sit and watch this, sweetheart. Just know that I love you, and I can get through anything so long as you’re with me.  
_ _ But, that said, if he hurts me - badly - or your intuition tells you that something isn’t right, do whatever you think is best, love. I trust your judgment, Ephram - now and always.’ _

_Badly_.

Because it was almost a given that Martin would hurt Freddie, wasn’t it? When that was what Martin Adjaye did, what he had always done. And unlike Ephram, Freddie had never taught himself to get off on being hurt; that particular survival skill was one they didn’t share.

Ephram flicked his fingers through the silver dust, and it swirled and rearranged itself into his spring green deliberate print.

> _He can’t hurt you if you don’t let him. He can’t hurt you if it’s giving you pleasure._  
>  I love you, Freddie, above and beyond anything and especially Martin Adjaye and what hold he thinks he still has on you. I’m not afraid to watch you using him so we can be safe from him forever. I know you’re not his.  
>  With me there, I can do the sugarplum spell instead of one of them witches.   
>  Honey, honey  
>  I want you to do your best to enjoy it. Do that for me. I’ll be right there.

Martin Adjaye spoke, and Ephram clenched his fist, the shimmering text pulling in on itself and vanishing between blinks. “I need an answer now,” Adjaye said, not quite impatient, but an obvious unfamiliarity in his voice when it came to being made to wait for anything. The vampire was rolling up his shirt sleeves when Ephram took Freddie’s hand in his and they turned to face him.

“We’re ready,” Ephram said. Or maybe Freddie said it. 

From Martin’s slow, carnivorous smile, it didn’t seem to matter.

=== *** ===

Freddie opened his eyes just as the plane was touching down again, and for a moment, through his fatigue - his dust was hard at work replacing the blood that he’d lost, but he still felt knackered; _wrung out_ after everything that had happened - he wasn’t entirely sure where he was. But the scent of his husband and the feel of denim against his cheek - not to mention the gentle dragging of long fingers through his hair - managed to chase away those few seconds of heart-racing disorientation almost as soon as they’d begun, and the fairy turned his face, his heart slowing again, to press a kiss to Ephram’s thigh before righting himself. Clothes a bit rumpled, brown hair mussed beyond anything a hurried finger-comb could do about it.

“Sorry, love,” he murmured, smiling softly as he leaned over to nuzzle a bit at Ephram’s cheek, “I didn’t mean to drop off like that. You should have woken me.”

Rubbing his eyes in a very little boy sort of a fashion, Freddie stretched, his wings shifting under his shirt, then peered out the window opposite them at the early morning light and the private airstrip they’d taken off from when they’d left Soapberry. “I’ll give Fei Fei a ring tomorrow,” he said, “- or maybe the next day - and thank her for the use of her plane.” The fairy chuckled, flashing a tired smile at his husband. “To be perfectly honest, I’m really not up to being gracious and charming just yet.”

“Should you be calling the station now that we’re home though, love?” Freddie asked, stifling a yawn, “Or do I get to carry on hoarding you all to myself for just a bit longer?”

_ martin adjaye’s fingers push through freddie’s soft, damp hair; they don’t clench, they don’t need to; even from where he’s standing moving from foot to foot gnawing his thumbnail down to the quick ephram can see the pressure divots that adjaye’s fingertips leave against his husband’s scalp; holding him pinned while adjaye’s fangs pierce his neck and freddie’s hips drag against the bed from a matching piercing thrust; and the sound freddie makes, it’s _

“Hmmm? Oh, no, honey – I booked off work before we left. They know they’ll hear from me when they need to.” Ephram took a long measured breath and smiled at Freddie, reaching out to pull his fairy close and press their foreheads together. His fingers found their way unerringly to map over where Martin’s had been, and Ephram let them linger there while he listened to Freddie’s slow, steady breathing, still faintly sleepy. God, he loved when Freddie was like this, sleepy and pliable and instinctively wanting to cuddle close.

“You needed the rest,” Ephram murmured. “And I’d never complain bout you fallin’ asleep on me, you kidding? Fei Fei can wait. I intend to take you home and take care of you till you get sick of me hovering and tell me to get lost.”

Ephram gave Freddie a quick kiss, to forestall his husband’s inevitable protest of the idea that he’d ever not want to be fussed over, and looked up when the pilot popped her head around the cockpit door to tell them they could disembark any time. “Thanks,” Ephram said. “We’ll be a minute.”

The pilot, well accustomed to this sort of thing, nodded and retreated back into her cockpit. Ephram stared after her for a while, swallowing and swallowing again.

_ –he’d told freddie to enjoy it he had and he’d meant it he’d absolutely meant it; the problem is that martin fucking adjaye is enjoying it too and the ‘it’ is ephram’s **husband** and they’re horrible and beautiful together and _

And they were in the car, because Ephram had somehow managed to move on automatic enough for them to get there. But with Freddie settling in and more awake, his eyes grey in the low light and staring intently at Ephram, he was going to need to buck the fuck up and stop getting lost in what they’d been through. What _Freddie_ had endured. Ephram had only been a witness, up until the end.

He gave a smile of his own, and said, “I told Cardero we were coming home and to get out. So it’ll be just Ollie waiting for us, honey.”

Freddie smiled softly as Ephram pulled him in close, the gentle pressure of his husband’s forehead resting against his own both sweet and soothing - though the way that the witch’s fingers carded through Freddie’s hair at the same time brought an unwelcome flash of memory with it. 

_ The unyielding steel of Martin’s hands, and the fearful shiver that came with the knowledge that he could crush your skull with less effort than it took most people to crack an egg - and the particular sick thrill of knowing he wouldn’t, because there was something else he wanted from you. Some other purpose you had yet to serve. _

_ Would be made to serve… _

For a moment, Freddie could feel it again - _the sharp sting of those teeth in his neck, the ache of that club of a cock thrusting inside him, and the scrutiny of those dark eyes, watching watching watching…_

_Reading every expression, every sound, and adjusting accordingly; taking everything there was to give, and then taking just a little bit more. Giving back pain and pleasure and shame - and then taking those too, just to show you that you’d never even had that much to call your own…_

But Freddie shoved that feeling, memory, whatever-it-was, down again as soon as he was able to identify it - they were home now, everything was over and done with, and Freddie _would not_ willingly spend another moment under Martin Adjaye’s control; not now and not _ever_ again, regardless of what had happened in London - and he leaned a bit harder into Ephram’s attentions, soaking in his husband’s love, and reveling in it; letting it saturate every bit of him, body and soul.

“Good,” the fairy murmured, his voice warm and thick with sleepy affection, “I want you to try to make me sick of you, love; I want all of your attention until the town forces me to hand its share back again.”

So he parted his lips when Ephram’s kiss came, wanting a taste of the man that he loved, before settling into passivity, his still recovering body unable to do much more - though, as the minutes passed, his long sleep having done him a world of good, Freddie found his mind getting sharper again in spite of his lethargy, and the uncomfortable evidence of what Martin had taken from him still lingering on his body and in his carriage.

And once they were in the car, Freddie once again leaning against his witch, unhappy unless he was touching him, the fairy tilted his head, studying Ephram for a moment; unable to ignore the vaguely haunted look that had been creeping into his sweetheart’s eyes ever since they’d landed, whenever he thought that Freddie wasn’t looking.

But Freddie was _always_ looking. He’d been looking at Ephram since the moment they’d met, and he never ever intended to stop.

“God, I’ve missed him,” Freddie murmured with a smile, relief and longing both showing in his eyes for a moment as he thought of his familiar, his smile growing as he reached out silently for the little Chin, and found him easily, now that they were home. “Ollie says we should bloody well hurry up; he’s waiting.”

“But before we get home officially, love,” the fairy said softly, after a moment’s pause, resting a hand on Ephram’s thigh and stroking gently, “-are you alright? You can tell me if you’re not; I’m not made of glass, sweetheart. And even if I was, I’d still want to know how you’re feeling.”

“What’s going through your mind, Ephram? Tell me, yeah? How can I help?”

_Maybe I’m the one made of glass. At least so far as being transparent._

And he was so wrapped up in what had happened in London, in watching Martin Adjaye having sex with and feeding on his husband, that for one excruciating moment Ephram thought that Freddie’s ‘God I’ve missed him’ wasn’t about Ollie, but the vampire.

The realization made Ephram feel like he’d missed a step on a staircase, the colour draining from his face. “You can’t help,” he said, the words soft but stark. “I’m sorry, honey, I’m so sorry, it ain’t your fault – I _told_ you to do it and I wanted you to like it, I didn’t want you to be in pain, but I’m just …” Ephram sat up straight, agitated, shoving the heels of his hands against his legs as he scrambled to spool himself back together.

“It was so hard to watch,” Ephram said finally, his eyes wide and wild as his gaze flitted over the seats, the floor, Freddie’s feet. “Him and you, him taking you, the way he talked to you–”

_low and near-silent, because martin adjaye has vampire hearing and his lips are right up against freddie’s sweetly pointed ear and ephram can’t hear what he’s saying but whatever it is, it’s making freddie gasp and flush and look at adjaye with such dark dark youth and loss and longing…._

With a pained groan, Ephram turned and half-slid from his seat, one knee hitting the floor while the other crushed against the front of the seat as he cantilevered his lanky form to lean his elbows heavily into Freddie’s lap, staring up at his fairy, entreating. “Don’t listen to me,” he begged, grabbing Freddie’s hands. “Don’t feel like you done anything wrong, I _told_ you to do it, we didn’t have no other choice. You were so brave, sweetheart, you did all the work. I’m just being a fucking idiot about it and it ain’t fair to you.”

After all, it had worked out, hadn’t it? Because when it came time for Ephram to perform the spell that Stellafa’s covenmates had devised, Martin Adjaye was full and smug and almost in a glutted daze of fucking and feeding. Thinking he’d surely won, gotten everything he could have wanted and perhaps more, perhaps planted a festering seed of destruction in his escaped fairy boy’s happy ever after.

And so Martin never saw the typhoon of Ephram’s unfettered magic coming.

Freddie felt those three soft-spoken words - _‘You can’t help’_ \- like a slap to the face, and the look in his eyes reflected it as he watched his husband begin to come apart in front of him. Ephram apologising and trying to explain himself, seeming like nothing so much as the embodiment of an exposed nerve - raw and sensitive and pained.

And the more he spoke, the further Freddie’s face fell; shame and regret settling in the pit of his stomach like jagged chunks of ice.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured, “That I made you stay there; that I put you through that because I was too frightened to be without you… It was selfish of me, and I- I’m sorry.”

When Ephram had told him to do his best to like it, to try to take the good from it and leave the traumatic aspects behind, Freddie had thought he was barking; that such a thing was impossible. But as it had turned out, he’d been wrong. 

The trauma had refused to be ignored; it had lingered there in the back of Freddie’s mind, whispering the details of what Martin had done to him with his own cock and his own hands, as well as what the vampire had _had_ done to him as he’d sat there watching intently, satisfaction in his eyes as he’d sat there puffing on his Cohiba - Freddie's tortured body jolting under the rapes from Martin's henchmen, his broken wing hanging askew as that long-ago boy cried until nothing but breath came - but it hadn’t come alone. It had brought pleasure with it - and nostalgia. 

And shame.

Freddie’s body had remembered Martin’s touch - his mouth, and his kisses; the deep heady plunge of his cock - and it had given him a warmer reception than he’d deserved. The boy that the fairy had been, that hungry love-starved child, soothed in the moment with reiterations of all the old false promises he’d always believed to be true. The ones he’d _wanted_ to be true.

The promises that Martin swore now _had_ been.

But a moment was only that - just a _moment_ ; over almost as soon as it had begun - and Freddie hadn’t been a child in a very long time. And more importantly, he was the furthest thing now from love-starved. 

There was only one man whose promises mattered to him. Only one man whose love he held dear and lived for - and that man was the furthest thing possible from Martin Adjaye.

Martin _had_ no heart - but Ephram’s beat the most beautiful rhythm in the world.

Unfortunately though, Freddie had taken for granted that Ephram _knew_ that, despite what he’d had to see in that room and London - and Freddie was certain that none of it had been a pleasant sight.

So when his husband sank to the floor of the car, the rest of him in Freddie’s lap, telling him that he wasn’t being fair and that Freddie shouldn’t listen; that they’d done what they’d had to, and that Freddie shouldn’t feel guilty about that, the fairy curled himself around his poor gutted darling and held him close and tight, a lump forming in his throat. “I know that we had to,” he said softly, thickly, his hands gently petting and stroking, trying to comfort Ephram as best he could, “-but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish it had been different, love. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t change it if I could. I’d never have gotten through any of that without you, Ephram. Any strength I had, I drew from you.”

“Oh, God, Freddie – d’you think I could’ve let you go through with it _without_ me being there? No, no, not on your life, I had to be there with you when it happened. That wasn’t selfish. I wanna always be there for you when you face terrible things. I ain’t….”

Ephram rubbed his face against Freddie’s trouser leg, wiping away his few hectic tears and then likewise curling into his husband’s embrace. “I need to explain myself better,” he said with more calmness and clarity, now that the knot of tense misery had burst and was being soothed. Reaching up with one arm, Ephram hooked it behind Freddie to hang onto him, though he stayed half-bunched off the seat.

“I’m glad I helped you get through it,” Ephram snuffled. “You helped me, too. And I ain’t gonna pretend like it didn’t twist my guts to see him fucking you, drinking from you, it did, you’re _mine_ and he should never of had the chance to take you anymore, not even once. But, Freddie.” Ephram turned his head so he could look at Freddie, his heart clenching painfully at the look of stricken regret on his husband’s beautiful face. “Freddie, baby, it was that but it was more’n that. Seeing you with Martin Adjaye, in his arms, how he talked to you and treated you, it … it….”

He pressed his lips together for a moment before saying, low and shaky, “…it made me so goddamn _sad_ , honey. Because I could see it and understand it, all of a sudden, more’n I ever could before. How young you was when he got you, how vulnerable and how _much_ you needed – you wanted, you _deserved_ – to be loved, and I … I’m so fuckin’ angry about it, Freddie, you should've had so much better. Your fucking father and those fucking teachers and those motherfucking bastards who roughed you up on the street and Jesus, honey, you went through all that so alone, so bravely for a little boy, and Adjaye _saw_ all that in you and he still, he still made you think he loved you and then tore you apart and–”

Ephram stopped there, his face contorted with emotion, not knowing if he wanted to start wailing out loud or slamming his fist into the car door. He’d known, of course, all the particulars, even had the visual memory of sixteen-year old sex worker Freddie being assaulted in Cabin 17, but this was on so much more vast of a scale, so much more of a demonstration of the way that Freddie had been savaged and discarded over and over when he was barely more than a child.

“How did you make it?” Ephram asked in a husky whisper. “Baby, where’d you find the strength to make it through?”

For a moment, Freddie was confused, not sure what it was that upset Ephram so, if he’d gotten the wrong end of the stick - but as his darling pulled himself together and began to explain, his feelings so strong that his body seemed barely able to process or contain them as they continued to cling to one another in the back of the car, the fairy found himself rendered speechless by the enormity of Ephram’s devastated anger.

For him.

For the boy that Freddie had yet to forgive for his blindness. His weakness. His pathetic desperate heart.

For _him_.

And he just gaped at Ephram for a few long silent beats, eyes wide and wet, feeling suddenly like a child whose meticulously designed and carefully constructed sandcastle was about to be decimated by a ferocious swell of the tide. “I…” he said brokenly, and then he stopped; lost and helplessly searching for an answer. “I don’t know, love,” Freddie murmured, his voice trembling as he dropped his gaze. “The same place that you did, I suppose...I mined every last inch of myself to find whatever I could, because there wasn’t anywhere else to look.”

“I had people, honey, I always had people. You only had yourself.” 

Ephram cupped Freddie’s face in both his lands, licking salty wetness from his own lips before continuing, coaxing Freddie to meet his gaze again instead of averting his eyes. “Don’t do that. Let me see you, sweetheart, my own lil gold-hearted boy, oh, honey. I’m so glad you did it, that you made it, that you didn’t let them worthless bastards pull you down. It’s incredible, what you was able to do, Freddie, the strength and the courage and the sheer fuckin’ determination it took for you to be here now with me, today, as beautiful and loving as you are.”

Shifting so he was more squarely facing his husband, Ephram moved one hand to clasp Freddie’s tightly. “And between us,” he said, his voice transitioning out of its anguished rage into something else – still angry, the heat of that making the shine of triumph a bright white-blue flame on his tongue and in the ocean of his eyes – “Freddie, we made it so’s Martin can never even come _near_ you again.”

Because as eviscerating as it had been to endure, both of them had known what would happen when Martin fucked Freddie and drank from him. It wasn’t just an enactment of the vampire’s upper hand, but a re-enactment; building on the blueprints that Martin had drafted so long ago, no matter that his house of Bvlgari diamonds had since been painfully razed to the foundations. 

What none of them had known was what would happen when Ephram – the _newly integrated with the demon_ Ephram – worked the spell that Stellafa’s coven-mates had provided. How could any of them predict it? Fairy and witch magic were never meant to work in tandem; the crucible of Anaxis that had intermingled Freddie’s silver dust with Ephram’s green magic had created something unprecedented. 

And, when it came to the attempted transference of sugarplum energy from buried deep inside of Freddie to Martin Adjaye, in a carnal, corporeal perversion of the body and the blood, unholy transubstantiation, that magic at its full force had scorched its own path.

The gentle touch of Ephram’s hands and the soft insistent encouragement of his voice brought Freddie’s eyes up again to lock with his husband’s. Blue on blue; Freddie’s bruised but hopeful, Ephram’s lit with a ferocious sort of exultation. And Freddie smiled at the sentiment; watery but sincere, and full of exhausted joyous _relief_ , murmuring, “We did, didn’t we? He really is _gone_ this time.”

The moment it happened would be seared into Freddie’s memory for the rest of his life. His mind and body at war with one another, his senses muddled and untrustworthy, he’d felt sick to his stomach as Martin pounded into him, longing for Ephram. His ass aching, his skin crawling from the steady trickles of blood oozing from various places on his body, the sheets tacky with it; and the coppery tang in the air - mixed with the cloying scent of sex - making him feel even woozier than the blood loss would allow for, all competing with the simultaneous panting full-body pleasure that Martin’s hands, mouth, and cock had always been able to wring out of him.

The scent of that cologne thick in his nose and setting his thighs trembling; his wings thrumming and his prick throbbing; his belly painted with shimmering arousal as Martin fucked him hard and deep, dragging whining moans from the pit of the fairy’s stomach and the back of his throat that had begun 22 years in the past.

It had been nearly over though. Freddie was close and he knew that Martin had allowed himself to draw even closer in his triumph. Just a few more minutes and that would have been that.

And Freddie had turned his head to look at Ephram, wanting that connection, needing to feel Ephram there with him, even as his darling murmured the words to Stellafa’s spell; the room charged with the scent of ozone as the magic seemed to grow denser in the air around them…

Flashes of green and silver building and chasing each other as Freddie felt the sugarplum stone buried deep and low inside him get hotter and hotter…

And then-

Then Martin was screaming.

Ephram would never have _wanted_ Freddie and himself to share some of the experiences they’d endured that were similar in nature – but they existed anyhow, and so it resonated with him that particular ugly, all-encompassing draw towards a man who’d taken you in and taken you apart at just seventeen. Watching Freddie be fucked and fed on by the vampire who’d all but owned him heart, body, and soul, would have been debilitating under circumstances other than these; the horror and ecstacy warring their way through every muscle of his husband’s body, every expression of exhausted pain and frenetic pleasure, the forced-out whimpers and groans that sounded younger and more vulnerable with each pass.

But the circumstances didn’t allow Ephram the dubious luxury of wallowing in the price of what they’d negotiated, the payment that Freddie was giving in each relentless thrust and deep bite that Martin took. The Cinquefoil was still resounding in its newness, sucking up the clots and blocks to his magic and sweeping out new routes for it, funnelling witch green and fairy silver together, and for once in his short, hobbled career as a functioning witch, Ephram knew he could do Stellafa’s spell. Do it and have it work the way it was supposed to.

When he spoke the words, though, meeting Freddie’s glassy, haunted grey eyes, ‘supposed to’ went straight out the window.

Or rather, straight through Martin Adjaye.

For the first few moments, all three of the men were awash with a loud, panicked terror as Freddie’s sugarplum burned so magically hot that it practically lit him up from inside, a searingly beautiful shimmering purple that made the trails of his wet arousal shimmer in response. Adjaye had himself one moment, perhaps two, of utter triumph – his cruel and handsome face shining with it – before that silvery plum glow made a streak across his own belly, inside him, wrenching that scream from his throat.

Lashing out with his fists, Martin pulled out and off of Freddie, staggering from the bed and making it only a few steps away before he wrapped his arms around his middle and doubled over. Ephram was on the bed in a flash, gathering his fairy in his arms and scanning him anxiously for wounds … finding none, only the glow in Freddie’s belly that was now settled into a calmer pulse. “Are you–” Ephram started, cradling Freddie’s face, only to hear Martin scream again.

The vampire had begun approaching the bed, but curled over in agony once more. “You little slut,” he gasped. “You miserable fucking tart, what have you done?” Adjaye shifted his glare, full of dark, cavernous hatred, to Ephram. “You cocked it up, didn’t you, the spell? I ….” He paused, instinctively moving back away from them, and stood straighter as he looked at his hands, his arms, his body. “No, it worked. I can feel the energy from that sugarplum sustaining me. Then why–”

Adjaye moved forward, and the unexpected result of Ephram’s unfettered magic became clear instantly: the closer Martin got to Freddie, the more excruciating the resulting pain inside him, as the sugarplum magics seemed to repel each other. Freddie’s glow wasn’t hot anymore, but it brightened in a warning as Adjaye approached. The vampire, on the other hand, was now debilitated as he tried to get near Freddie again. “This is – don’t think you’re free of me, Freddie, you bloody whore,” Adjaye gasped, retreating once more to a distance where he could talk without being wracked with pain. “I can still get to you when I want, whenever I choose, don’t think you’re free, you’ll _never_ be rid of me!”

“Come on,” Ephram said, voice tight with anger but growing in boldness as he gathered Freddie up, wrapped in bloodstained bedsheets. “We’re gettin’ the fuck out of here. And he can’t follow.” The witch stopped with Freddie held tight against him, meeting Adjaye’s furious stare across the room. “He can’t come near you, honey. He can’t ever _touch_ you, not for the rest of our lives.”

And it had taken the escape from Adjaye’s bolthole, the flight back home to Soapberry, this car ride for that new world order, that forcible ejection of Freddie’s most persistent ghoul from his wounded past, to settle in properly. Reaching a culmination right here, right now.

“He’s gone,” Ephram repeated simply, foregoing any other expressions of dramatic victory in favour of pulling his beloved husband close, feeling all that familiar and dear life filling the man in his arms. Never, he hoped, to be threatened by Martin Adjaye ever again. 


End file.
